142 
ANIMAL LIFE 
piercing ovipositors, by means of which the eggs are de- 
posited in the ground or in the leaves or stems of green 
plants, or even in the hard wood of tree-trunks. 
Fie. 79.—The cottony cushion scale 
insect (Icerya purchasi), from 
California. The male is winged, 
the female wingless and with a 
large waxen egg-sac (e.8.) attached 
to her body. (The lines at the left 
of each figure indicate the size of 
the insects.) 
gnaws its way out. Such 
dant on oak trees (Fig. 80). 
Some of 
Lillie 
the scale insects se- 
crete wax from their 
bodies and form a 
large, often beautiful 
egg-case, attached to 
and nearly covering the body in 
which eggs are deposited (Fig. 
79). The various gall insects lay 
their eggs in the soft tissue of 
plants, and on the hatching of 
the larve an abnormal growth 
of the plant occurs about the 
young insect, forming an in- 
closing gall that serves not only 
to protect the insect within, 
but to furnish it with an abun- 
dance of plant-sap, its food. The 
young insect remains in the gall 
until it completes its develop- 
ment and growth, when it 
insect galls are especially abun- 
The care of the eggs and the 
young of the social insects, as the bees and ants, are de- 
scribed in Chapter IX, 
